


The Crotchety Places

by lesyeuxverts



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 05:06:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1014439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesyeuxverts/pseuds/lesyeuxverts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are parts of Hogwarts that have never been the same, not since the War and the Great Rebuilding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Crotchety Places

There are parts of Hogwarts that have never been the same, not since the War and the Great Rebuilding. Ron thinks that he knows them like the palm of his hand, now – and he thinks sometimes that he needs them just as much as his hands. Someone has to remember.

The students certainly don't. Sometimes Ron can look at them and think that maybe the war never happened at all, maybe there's nothing but Gobstones and Quidditch, because from the way they act, he'd never know. It's a Hogsmeade weekend, he remembers, and he thinks that maybe he should give them some leeway, knowing the way it was when he was a student. It's no good, after all, if he bangs and slams around the place the way old Filch did.

Some days, Ron thinks that he doesn't know very much more than Filch did. Filch must have learned something in those mail order courses, after all, and all Ron has done is come back to Hogwarts and stay here as if the shadows will give him some sense of meaning. He doesn't know that shadows can do it, but he thinks that he'd better try, because nothing else he knows can. Nothing outside of Hogwarts feels right anymore, and he's come back, and he'll stay.

This is one of the crotchety places, one of the places that's been changed – for the worse, the students say, calling it haunted and cranky and creepy. They can sense the mood of the place. They know that even the ghosts avoid it, and they've started to look sideways at Ron for lingering here.

Cranky is one word for it. Severe might be another – or strict, uncompromising, sometimes cruel. It's Snape's place, that's all Ron knows, the only thing that's left of him in Hogwarts, and Ron stays in the corridor by the old Potions dungeon even when everyone else is gone.

Some people don't leave ghosts behind – other people, they don't leave a mark at all. Ron knows that the swamp that Fred and George left behind is still there, and the post that Fawkes roosted on in Dumbledore's office, and the gauzy bits and baubles in Trelawney's old classroom – they're all still there. Some things are solid, and other things pass with the days, like the mud that the students track in and the marks that they scrawl on their desks.

Once, Ron would've said that Hogwarts never changed, but that was before the War.

That was before the war, and before Snape. Ron's seen class after class come through Hogwarts, and at first they were full of the stories, ready to listen to his and tell him what their parents had done, but now they seem to have forgotten, and all Ron can do is come down to the dungeons and rest against the wall, slide down against it until he's sitting outside Snape's old classroom. A few nights out of the year, a few touches, half a dozen words – it might not be much, but it's enough that Ron won't forget.

Cranky, that's what the students call it. Ron would've said the same when he was a student himself, if he was feeling particularly brave. But Snape – Ron shivers, and rubs the gooseflesh off his arms, the phantom touch of the man he hasn't touched in years.

Ron can't forget. The War isn't gone, just because they've had the Great Rebuilding. Hogwarts is clean and shiny, all the rubble cleared away, but that doesn't erase anything. It doesn't change anything. There are still these queer spots – here, by Snape's room, and up in Dumbledore's office when the portraits are silent, and out in the battlefield where the dead lay where they fell. There are the tables in the Great Hall, where they were all laid out, and there are some days Ron can't go in there, can't bear to see if they're empty or laden.

Some days are easier than others – that's one thing that Ron's learned since the war. Some places are different than others, maybe better and maybe not, but this is his place, his and Snape's. Cranky isn't the right word, Ron thinks. He's learned better than that.


End file.
